USEUCOM Area of Responsibility
Activity Statement:
• Deliver briefings and participate in discussions about various aspects
of culture and US interests in the United States European Command
(USEUCOM) area of responsibility (AOR).
Affective Lesson Objective:
• Respond to the importance of Air Force officers understanding US
national security concerns in the AOR, regional cultural perspectives,
and the Combatant Command’s mission in the AOR.
Affective Samples of Behavior:
• Voluntarily discuss US national security concerns in the USEUCOM
AOR.
• Value that an understanding of regional cultural perspectives is key to
relating and communicating with partners in the USEUCOM AOR.
• Assert the importance of the Combatant Command’s mission in light of
US national security concerns in the USEUCOM AOR.
USEUCOM Area of Responsibility 401 OVERVIEW OF UNITED STATES
EUROPEAN COMMAND
(USEUCOM) AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY
F
or several years after World War II the services maintained separate commands in
Europe that reported directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but America’s rapid postwar demobilization, followed by the end of the occupation of Germany in 1949,
led many to question the US commitment to the defense of Western Europe against the
Soviet Union. The period saw a sense of looming crisis in the West about how to provide
for the common defense, especially after the Berlin Crisis of 1948-49, when the Soviet
Union blocked access to the divided city and the United States and United Kingdom
responded with an unprecedented airlift. In 1949 the allies established the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), but did little else to meet their new commitments.
In June 1950 the United States and its allies were jolted into action by the surprise attack
on South Korea by communist North Korea. Early in 1951 NATO established Allied
Command Europe and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).
General Dwight D. Eisenhower was called from retirement to become the first Supreme
Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). The United States continued to defend Korea, but
simultaneously sent massive reinforcements to Europe to deter the Soviet Union from
similar aggression there.
To provide for national command within NATO and to help control this build-up of forces,
General Eisenhower proposed a separate command for all US forces in Europe. USEUCOM
was established on 1 August 1952 to provide “unified command and authority” over all
US forces in Europe. Because the senior US commander would continue as Supreme
Allied Commander Europe, Eisenhower recommended giving “a maximum of delegated
authority” to a four-star deputy. The first US Commander-in-Chief Europe (USCINCEUR)
was General Matthew B. Ridgway, former commander of Eighth Army and the Far East
Command during the Korean War. Eisenhower returned to the United States just as the
new command was established.
USEUCOM prepared plans for the defense of Western Europe within the NATO framework
against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact and used the Military Assistance Program to
help its NATO partners build their military capabilities as well. USEUCOM also assumed
responsibility for command and control of US nuclear forces, and in 1961 began operating
an airborne command post, Operation SILK PURSE.
The Cold War was marked by continued tensions with the Soviet Union, including
widespread unrest in Eastern Europe following the death of Joseph Stalin. USEUCOM also
conducted out-of-sector operations such as a major contingency operation to Lebanon in
1958. In 1961 Berlin once again became a flash point when the Soviets erected a wall to
stop the hemorrhage of people fleeing Communist rule.
402 In the early 1960s, sharp policy disagreements emerged within NATO, and in 1966 France
demanded the removal of all US and NATO headquarters and forces from French soil.
The following year SHAPE moved to Mons, Belgium, while Headquarters USEUCOM
moved to Patch Barracks. Headquarters Seventh Army moved to Heidelberg, where it
merged with Headquarters US Army, Europe.
During the 1970s, force protection concerns in Europe grew as terrorist groups such as
the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades targeted US facilities and personnel with
bombings, kidnapping, and assassinations. Palestinian groups brazenly conducted terror
operations in Europe, such as the kidnapping of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich
Olympic Games.
During the 1980s, the armed forces began to recover from the Vietnam War and US
forces in Europe grew to over 350,000. The unified command plan was changed in
1983 to transfer responsibility for the Middle East from USEUCOM to a new combatant
command, US Central Command (USCENTCOM), but USEUCOM retained responsibility
for the “confrontation states” of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. At the same time USEUCOM
was formally assigned responsibility of Africa, south of the Sahara.
In the 1990s, USEUCOM reached out to the emerging democracies and was also active in
peace and stability operations in the Balkans, including Bosnia, Macedonia, and Kosovo.
But it had to conduct these new missions with fewer assigned forces as its strength fell
below 120,000.
Immediately after the attacks against New York and Washington DC on September 11,
2001, NATO invoked Article V of the treaty and deployed a NATO early warning aircraft
to help monitor the skies over North America. USEUCOM provided major forces for
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and stepped up its efforts to protect US interests in
Europe and Africa. Subsequent terrorist attacks in the USEUCOM theater in Casablanca,
Madrid, London, and Algiers made it clear that terrorism demanded a collective response.
USEUCOM worked to build partner capacity in Europe and Africa for peacekeeping
operations and deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
As USEUCOM’s challenges evolved, so did its missions and functions. In 2003 the
headquarters reorganized to establish the USEUCOM Plans and Operations Center.
From 2006-2008 it helped stand-up a new unified command, US Africa Command, which
took over responsibility for Department of Defense activities in Africa on October 1, 2008.
Territory
USEUCOM’s area of responsibility covers almost one-fifth of the planet including all of
Europe, large portions of Asia, parts of the Middle East, and the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.
The command is responsible for US military relations with NATO and 51 countries on two
continents, with a total population of almost one billion people.
USEUCOM Area of Responsibility 403 While geographically located in the Middle East, Israel is considered a part of USEUCOM.
Another state of interest is the Holy See, commonly known as the Roman Catholic Vatican.
The following table lists all the countries in which the United States has a vital national
interest that are within the USEUCOM AOR.
Albania
Andorra
Armenia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Belgium
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Georgia
Germany
Greece
Holy See (the Vatican)
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Kosovo
Latvia
Lichtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Malta
Moldova
Monaco
Montenegro
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
San Marino
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
Ukraine
United Kingdom
History & Myth
Although the human history of the lands under the purview of USEUCOM reaches back
thousands of years, the political map of Europe as we know it today did not take shape
until after the Thirty Years’ War ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia.
Covering the rich and diverse history of the 51 nations under the responsibility of USEUCOM
would take more than the space allotted in these pages; however, key historical events of
the region are outlined to serve as an introduction.
Early European History
The foundation of Western Civilization and the nations we call part of USEUCOM today
come from ancient peoples who migrated into southern Europe from Asia Minor well
before 3000 BCE, and developed into what we now know as Ancient Greece. By 336
BCE, when Alexander the Great gained the throne of Macedonia, the Greek world had
devolved into oligarchy after over 100 years of warfare. Within 15 months, Alexander
the Great marched his armies as far north as the Danube River, destroyed the city of
Thebes in Egypt, marched into Greek cities and demanded submission, and stamped out
rebellions. In 334 BCE he marched into Asia, and in 327 BCE his empire extended as far
404 east as India. With Alexander’s death in 323 BCE, classical Greece came to an abrupt
end, and a century of warfare arrived as his generals struggled for control. Eventually,
Alexander’s world was split into the three kingdoms of Macedonia, Western Asia, and
Egypt, much of which was later reunited under Roman rule.
Around 500 BCE the Romans settled in northern Italy. Here they constructed a new
form of political organization called a republic and drew up the Roman constitution. The
Romans embraced the Greek civilization to the east and learned from their mistakes.
Ancient Greece is renowned for its art, philosophy, and cultural achievements, but the
Greeks could not maintain their world view for more than a few centuries; the Romans,
however, built a world that lasted for over 1,000 years. The Roman Republic, from 509
BCE until 31 BCE, developed the distinctive Roman forms of law and government, while
the period from 31 BCE to 476 CE constitutes the period we know as the Roman Empire.
In this second period of Roman rule, particularly under Augustus Caesar, Rome captured
and controlled all of modern-day France, Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, Palestine, North
Africa, and Great Britain. This is also the period in which a mysterious new religious
movement appeared among the lower orders of the Roman peoples—Christianity.
From approximately 410 CE until 476 CE, Rome and the Roman Empire underwent a
rapid devolution. By the end of the fifth century, the western Roman Empire split into
various Germanic kingdoms. The Ostogoths settled in Italy, the Franks in Gaul, the
Burgundians in Provence, the Visigoths in Spain, and the Angles and Saxons in England.
Christianity, meanwhile, spread through these tribes and became firmly established
throughout Europe. This blending of Greco-Roman tradition, Judeo-Christian tradition,
and Germanic custom formed the beginnings of a distinctive western European culture
as the area began to separate itself culturally, geographically, religiously, politically, and
economically from the remains of the Roman Empire—now known as Byzantium—and
the Muslim world. In this period, from approximately 500 to 1000 (the early Middle Ages)
Europe as we have come to know it was born.
The Enlightenment
In a period of approximately 100 years, from the late seventeenth through the eighteenth
century, Europe as a whole underwent an intellectual revolution that rippled through
society and had lasting repercussions for the entire world. This revolution is known as the
Enlightenment.
Though many of the greatest philosophers of the Enlightenment—Montesquieu,
Rousseau, and Voltaire, among others—came from France, the “founding fathers” of
the Enlightenment were actually British: John Locke, Issac Newton, and Francis Bacon.
These three men formed the foundations of what became Enlightenment thought—a world
grounded in reason and observation. The ideas that emerged from the Enlightenment
inspired revolutions, most notably the American and French Revolutions, and developed
the concepts of modern science and the scientific method. The most famous phrase
of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence—“life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness”—owes itself to John Locke’s theories on natural rights, including the rights to
USEUCOM Area of Responsibility 405 life, liberty, and property as outlined in his Two Treatises of Government. Thomas Paine
was another British philosopher of the Enlightenment, who inspired two revolutions: the
American Revolution, following the publication of Common Sense in 1776, and the French
Revolution, following the publication of The Rights of Man in 1791.
Some of the most debated issues of the nineteenth century, including theories of evolution,
modern economics, and socialism, trace their roots to ideas presented in Europe during
the eighteenth century. Likewise, some of the least debated issues of our modern era
including Newton’s concrete and scientific explanation of the movement of the universe,
the idea of human progress, and the founding principles of most of the modern social
sciences also owe their background to this period. By the end of the Enlightenment era,
Europe transformed from a world grounded in medieval social, political, and economic
traditions into the peak of the industrial revolution and worldwide colonialism.
Wars and Unification
The early history of Europe is a history of empires: the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman
Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Napoleonic
Empire, to name a few. Most of the countries in the USEUCOM territory were, at some
point, part of one or more of these empires as they spread across the region. Military
might dictate political borders, social structures, economics, and language for centuries.
Unification was a military process of seizing land and peoples by force and incorporating
neighboring territory into ever-expanding empires, typically controlled by a monarch or
dictator. Areas on the borders of powerful nations such as France, Spain, and Russia,
changed hands numerous times, often within the lifetime of the people who lived in the
territory.
This idea of unification by military force began to change in the modern era. The two
World Wars had a profound effect on the psyche of the European nations. Though treaties
between nations had been a fact of life for centuries, World War I resulted in the first real
effort to politically unite Europe, and the world, in a lasting and peaceful contract known
as the League of Nations. Europe was divided by World War II into two basic factions;
even “neutral” nations such as Sweden and Switzerland were ultimately still involved
in the conflict. When the war came to an end, the world as a whole was fundamentally
changed by the arrival of nuclear weapons. This powerful threat in the hands of the two
rival superpowers—Russia and the United States—sparked conflict that divided Europe
for the next 50 years. This threat of nuclear war, and the memory of all of the European
wars of the past, shifted the focus of European unification from militarily to politicallyminded.
There has been an increasing trend towards political, economic, and military unification
in Europe. The United Nations, born from the old League of Nations after World War
II, was the first real symbol of unity in Europe. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) was a military alliance of several European nations, the United States, and
Canada formed in response to the United Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) communist
threat. When Western Germany joined NATO in 1955, the USSR established the Warsaw
Treaty, which served the same military purpose for the USSR that NATO served for
406 Western Europe. In the 1950s the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the
European Economic Community (EEC) were formed by six European nations— Belgium,
France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany—as unified political
and economic efforts intended to escape from the severe nationalism that sparked the
Second World War. Over the following decades, several other nations joined these quasijoint organizations, and in 1993 the two organizations fully merged and were renamed
into what is today known as the European Union, consisting of 27 of the 51 USEUCOM
nations.
Economic Systems
Throughout its history and into the present day, Europe provides examples of the four
most basic economic systems in the world: the traditional economy, market economy,
mixed economy, and planned economy. Few, if any, nations in USEUCOM maintain
traditional economic systems, but this was the economy of old Europe: decisions were
made on the basis of custom or tradition. A traditional economy does not allow for individual
achievement, new technology, or growth, but under traditional systems, such as feudalism,
economic growth is not of particular concern to the population. However, with the social
upheaval caused by the advent of the industrial revolution and the Enlightenment, new
economic theories developed that radically changed the economic view of Europe.
The market economy, a system in which goods and services are traded and prices are
typically the result of subjective value judgments, is commonly known as capitalism. In
a true market economy prices are influenced by competition among buyers and sellers
and market decisions are dominated by supply and demand. Market economies with little
or no governmental intervention are known as free markets. While the United States is
often viewed as a purely capitalist economy, a better example of a pure market economy
is Switzerland. On the opposite side of the spectrum from the market economy is the
planned economy, or command economy, in which decisions about production, distribution,
commodity, and service prices of goods and services are made by the government. Market
forces have little or no say in the economic decisions. There is less flexibility in this type of
economy, however there is also little or no need for resources in advertising or marketing.
Socialism and Soviet communism fall under this heading.
Mixed economies, predictably, fall in the middle between the market economy and
planned economy, and are perhaps the dominant economic form in Europe. A mixed
economy combines certain features of the other two types so that both private business
and government play an important role in economic decision-making. There is flexibility in
some areas and government control in others. This type of economic system is favored in
societies that seek to balance a wide range of political and economic views—the United
Kingdom (UK) serving as a prime example in Europe.
In 1945, Europe was seeking a way to create a European economic market comparable
to the superpower that was the United States. In the aftermath of WWII, a number
of organizations emerged that sought to rebuild Europe and the European economy,
primarily by uniting sovereign nations in support of common economic goals. In 1993,
USEUCOM Area of Responsibility 407 these various agencies came together as the European Union. Over the course of the
next 10 years, the European Union expanded from mostly Western European nations to
include many of the nations of the former Soviet Union.
One of the goals of the European Union from the beginning was the adoption of a common
currency throughout Europe. In 1999, the Euro was introduced in bank operations and
conversion rates. The gradual introduction was finalized in 2002 with the introduction
of Euro currency and the withdrawal of national currencies; however, the Euro remains
a hotly debated subject in Europe. On the positive side, it provides trade efficiency
and diversification of reserve currencies, but on the negative side it eliminates national
sovereignty and creates an environment dependent on the stability of a single currency.
Adoption of the Euro is not a mandatory requirement for membership in the European
Union, and several member nations—the UK for example—have opted out of adoption of
the unified currency. Nevertheless, the Euro is growing in prominence in Europe.
Political Systems
While the European Union has become one of the most prominent features of the political
landscape in the USEUCOM AOR, it has not always been the case. Prior to its founding,
and especially during the Cold War, the major divisions in this part of the world centered
around the differing ideals of communist and democratic thought. Therefore, to understand
European politics as a whole requires an understanding of the impact the Soviet Union
had on the political and military atmosphere of Eastern Europe.
NOTE: The following is an excerpt from the Library of Congress Country study on the
former Soviet Union.
While liberating Eastern Europe from Nazi Germany in World War II, the Red Army
established political and military control over that region. The Soviet Union intended to
use Eastern Europe as a buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders and
to keep threatening ideological influences at bay. Continued control of Eastern Europe
became second only to defense of the homeland in the hierarchy of Soviet security
priorities.
On May 14, 1955, the Soviet Union institutionalized its East European alliance system,
henceforth known as the Warsaw Pact, when it met with representatives from Albania,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania in Warsaw to sign the
multilateral Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, which was identical
to their existing bilateral treaties with the Soviet Union. The 1955 treaty establishing the
Warsaw Pact stated that relations among the signatories were based on total equality,
mutual noninterference in internal affairs, and respect for national sovereignty and
independence. It declared that the Warsaw Pact’s function was collective self-defense of
the member states against external aggression, as provided for in Article 51 of the United
Nations Charter. Until the early 1960s, the Soviet Union used the Warsaw Pact more as a
tool in East-West diplomacy than as a functioning political-military alliance. The Warsaw
408 Pact administered both the political and the military activities of the Soviet alliance system
in Eastern Europe. A series of changes that began in 1969 gave the Warsaw Pact the
structure it retained through the late 1980s.
Political Organization. The general (or first) secretaries of the communist and workers’
parties and heads of state of the Warsaw Pact member states met in the Political
Consultative Committee (PCC). The PCC provided a formal point of contact for the Soviet
and East European leaders in addition to less formal bilateral meetings and visits. As the
highest decision-making body of the Warsaw Pact, the PCC was charged with assessing
international developments that affected the security of the allied states and warranted the
execution of the Warsaw Pact’s collective self-defense provisions. In practice, however,
the Soviet Union was unwilling to rely on the PCC to perform this function, fearing that
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania would use PCC meetings to oppose Soviet
plans and policies. Beginning in the late 1960s, when several member states began to
use the alliance structure to confront Soviet domination and assert more independent
foreign policies, the Soviet Union had to negotiate to gain support for its foreign policy
within Warsaw Pact councils.
Military Organization. The Warsaw Pact’s military organization was larger and more
active than the alliance’s political bodies. Several different organizations were responsible
for implementing PCC directives on defense matters and developing the capabilities of
the national armies that constituted the Warsaw Pact’s armed forces. The principal task,
however, of the military organizations was to link the East European armies to the Soviet
armed forces. The alliance’s military agencies coordinated the training and mobilization
of the East European national forces assigned to the Warsaw Pact. In turn, these forces
could be deployed in accordance with Soviet military strategy against an Non-Soviet
Warsaw Pact (NSWP) country or NATO. The Joint Staff was the only standing Warsaw
Pact military body and the official executive organ of the Committee of Ministers of
Defense, commander in chief, and Military Council. As such, it performed the bulk of the
Warsaw Pact’s work in the military realm. Like the Joint Command, the Joint Staff had both
Soviet and East European officers. The non-Soviet officers also served as the principal
link between the Soviet and East European armed forces. The Joint Staff organized all
joint exercises and arranged multilateral meetings and contacts of Warsaw Pact military
personnel at all levels.
Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the 1970s, the Soviet Union abandoned its
earlier efforts to achieve the simultaneous dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact and
concentrated instead on détente—legitimating the territorial status quo in Europe. The
consequences of détente, however, also posed a significant challenge to Soviet control
of Eastern Europe by causing a crisis in Soviet-East German relations, blurring the strict
bipolarity of the Cold War era, opening Eastern Europe to greater Western influence,
and loosening Soviet control over its allies. Despite these problems, the détente period
witnessed relatively stable Soviet-East European relations within the Warsaw Pact.
USEUCOM Area of Responsibility 409 In the late 1970s, the West grew disenchanted with détente, which had failed to prevent
Soviet advances in the Third World, the deployment of SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic
missiles (IRBMs) aimed at West European targets, the invasion of Afghanistan, or the
suppression of Solidarity. The Soviet Union used the renewal of East-West tension as a
justification for forcing its allies to close ranks within the Warsaw Pact. But restoring the
alliance’s cohesion and renewing its confrontation with Western Europe proved difficult
after several years of good East-West relations.
In the mid- to late 1980s, the future of the Warsaw Pact hinged on Mikhail Gorbachev’s
developing policy toward Eastern Europe. He demonstrated a greater sensitivity to East
European concerns than previous Soviet leaders by briefing the NSWP leaders in their
own capitals after the 1985 Geneva and 1986 Reykjavik superpower summit meetings.
In 1987 the Warsaw Pact, under Soviet tutelage, adopted a defense-oriented military
doctrine. In the late 1980s, however, mounting economic difficulties and the advanced
age of trusted, long-time communist party leaders, like Gustáv Husák in Czechoslovakia,
Todor Zhivkov in Bulgaria, and János Kádár in Hungary, intensified the danger of domestic
turmoil and internal power struggles in the NSWP countries and threatened the alliance’s
cohesion.
The reforms begun by Gorbachev and carried on by Boris Yeltsin eventually saw the
dissolution of the Soviet Union, the formation of several new countries, and greater
independence for the Eastern European countries formerly dominated by the Soviets.
Art
Prior to the European Renaissance, the vast majority of art in Europe was religiously
based. Books were handmade objects, treasured as works of art and symbols of enduring
knowledge, frequently bound in covers set with enamel, jewels, and ivory, typically made
by monks, and recognized as an attribute of God regardless of their actual content.
Gothic architecture provided an engineering challenge that resulted in some of the most
well-known and breathtaking buildings in the world. Paintings, stained glass, and even
tapestries were intricately created around religious themes and stories. In the fifteenth
through seventeenth centuries, the period commonly known as the Renaissance,
musicians and artists traveled extensively throughout Europe so that, despite regional
differences, European art of all forms maintained overall similarities based on the period,
rather than the region.
The most important music of the Renaissance was developed for the church. However
by the end of the Renaissance, the Reformation swept through Europe and patronage
of music was split between the Catholic church, Protestant churches, royal courts,
wealthy amateurs, and music printing. Inspired by classical Greece, musicians of the
Renaissance began to link music and poetry in an increasingly dramatic fashion in an
attempt to stir the listener’s emotions. Opera evolved out of this transformation in musical
creation, combined with the courtly entertainments of the period; in a similar fashion,
ballet and modern dance evolved out of this same period. Noblemen and noblewomen
were expected to maintain an upright carriage and grace. In the late seventeenth and
410 eighteenth centuries, professional dancers began to gain prominence, focusing on fast
footwork, high jumps, and multiple turns. French King Louis XIV instituted a school for
dancers in 1669, which established the vocabulary of classical dance as we know it today.
Western European dance favors symmetry, balance, and harmony of the entire body.
Early dance choreography was related to contemporary social dances and costumes
were based on court dress of the time, with tight corsets for women and short skirts for
men. As a result, female dancers’ movements were considerably restricted, while male
dancers dominated the stage.
The Enlightenment played a critical role in the evolution of western art, as the influence
of reason and observation of the world changed both the visual and fine arts. Religious
subjects began to disappear as religion itself was questioned under this rapidly spreading
philosophy. Trends in the visual arts leaned towards paintings and drawings of what could
be seen and experienced in the world, discarding the romantic and idealized, and seeking
simplicity, harmony, and proportion. The stories told in opera and ballet were the stories of
the nature of man, in keeping with the Enlightenment search for knowledge and truth. In
reaction to the rational, secular ideas of the Enlightenment, romanticism emerged in the
nineteenth century as an art form that embraced uncontrollable power, unpredictably, and
extremes. Music became something accessible to the general public, not just the courts
and the church, whether it was through large performances to the public in theaters or
intimate parlor music. Until the development of the phonograph, radio, and television in
the twentieth century, the piano became the central component of domestic life for the
middle class.
The development of mass industry, the colonialism that brought Chinese and Japanese
culture into Europe, and rapid developments in the social sciences and intellectual theories
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought sweeping changes to art in Europe as
well, including the development of entirely new genres of art, such as photography and
modern dance.
Mission and Current Posture
The mission of the US European Command is to conduct military operations, international
military engagement, and interagency partnering to enhance transatlantic security and
defend the United States. This is done by establishing an agile security organization able
to conduct full-spectrum activities as part of “whole of government” solutions to secure
enduring stability in Europe and Eurasia.
Headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, USEUCOM is a joint forces community of
approximately 1,000 US Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and government civilians,
who work and live at four different locations around the city. From its state-of-the-art plans
and operations center, the command directs the operation of more than 100,000 military
and civilian personnel operations across 10.7 million square miles of land and 13 million
square miles of ocean. The command is also responsible for maintaining the quality of
life, including health care and schools, for almost 130,000 military family members living
in Europe.
USEUCOM Area of Responsibility 411 In his 2010 posture testimony, ADM James Stavridis, USEUCOM/CC, reported on the
current state of the command. He said:
The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Civilians at USEUCOM contribute
to our national security every day through professional engagements with
our Allies and partners in the European theater. Operationally, USEUCOM
continuously strives to find flexible authorities and funding mechanisms to
build the capacity of those partner nations willing to fight side-by-side with
the United States.
Furthermore, USEUCOM’s efforts to fulfill the short-term task of building
enduring capability are vital to ensuring the long-term stability and security of
Europe. In addition to increasing the contributions of our allies and partners
to operations outside Europe, building partner capacity allows us to make
significant progress toward achieving strategic objectives within the AOR.
For example, conducting security sector reform assessments in Albania,
which is an inter-agency effort critical to integrating Balkan countries into the
European community. USEUCOM also has numerous programs targeted at
countering the proliferation of WMD throughout the theater, but we cannot
stop there. With greater flexibility, these authorities can achieve greater
strategic goals in support of our theater and national objectives.
US European Command serves as an important link between the United
States and our friends in Europe, effectively bridging the Atlantic. We are
building and strengthening relations with our European partners that will
help us ensure the security of the United States at home and abroad.
Conclusion
USEUCOM has helped keep the peace in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for more
than half a century. As it transforms for the future, it will continue to meet new challenges. Its
vision is of an agile security organization with a “whole of government” approach seeking
to support enduring stability and peace in Europe and Eurasia. Through USEUCOM, the
United States is committed to enduring partnerships, cooperative solutions to mutual
security challenges, and ready forces to provide regional security. Hopefully this overview
of USEUCOM has piqued your interest to learn more about the European and Eurasian
countries included in this command’s area of responsibility. To help you do that, refer to
the next section for links to Internet sources that provide more specific information about
this area of the world.
412 STUDENT ASSIGNMENTS
Students will select a specific country from the list provided and deliver a 5-9 minute
prepared briefing addressing the topic. Use the framework below to develop the main
points, but to ensure the topics are covered you must submit your list of preferred main
points to your instructor for approval prior to beginning your research. To assist in your
research, a list of Web sites is provided on the next page.
Additionally, you must prepare a ½ to 1-page bullet background paper on your subject.
You should provide a copy of your paper to your instructor prior to your briefing. You can
then use the paper to give your briefing. The bullet paper will follow the format in The
Tongue and Quill. Pick a country and two domains from the lists below:
Countries: France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, United Kingdom
Domains: Family & Kinship, Religion & Spirituality, Sex & Gender, Politics & Social
Relations, Economics & Resources, Time & Space, Language & Communication,
Technology & Material, History & Myth, Sustenance & Health, Aesthetics & Recreation,
Learning & Knowledge
Main Point 1 (choose one from the list of cultural domains)
Main Point 2 (choose a different domain for your 2nd main point)
RESEARCH SITES
• Defense Language Institute http://www.dliflc.edu/products.html
• Field Support Modules http://fieldsupport.dliflc.edu/index.aspx
• Library of Congress http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/profiles.html
• Military
Policy
Awareness
cfm?type=page&pageID=3
Links
http://merln.ndu.edu/index.
• Miller Center of Public Affairs http://millercenter.org/scripps
• NATO http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/index.htm
• The World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
index.html
• United Nations http://www.un.org/en/
• US Department of State—Background Notes http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/
• US Department of State—Regional Bureaus http://www.state.gov/p/index.htm
• US Department of State—Terrorism Country Reports http://www.state.gov/j/
ct/rls/crt/
USEUCOM Area of Responsibility 413 ______________________________
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